Monday, December 27, 2010

The Black Swan and Art

"But Nina succeeds in the end precisely not by being fucked. She’s a big success, literally transforming herself into a black swan on stage. The way to this success is not by sex, but through a couple of other means: Fantasizing about *homosexual sex* (with Lily) and, much more importantly, fantasizing about killing Lily (Art is Crime, as Joyelle likes to say). Art is fantasizing. She doesn’t actually have sex, but she imagines (homosexual) sex. She performs, but she performs so well she herself can’t tell the real from the fantasy. Art is quite convincing!"

Monday, December 13, 2010

Interview with Johan Jönson

Q: In Collobert Orbital, what is the relationship between your book and Danielle Collobert’s work?A: My intention was to expand on (parts of) her work; to re-vectorize it into a new technological and political (discursive) orbital.Q: Why were you drawn to Collobert’s work?A: Because of its stuttering, gasping struggle for survival.Q: Her life?A: Because she was very nomadic, but, in difference to the philosophy of pious hopes, it did not make her free in the least. On the contrary, it killed her. Or, more specificially: for me she was a clear and productive example of radical immanence.Q: In Collobert Orbital as well as a lot of your other books, you refer to your work as a care-giver. I’ve read discussions about your relationship to traditional “working class literature.” What do you see as your relationship to this tradition?A: I use its advances, write partially in critical dialogue with it. I share the class aspects, the feelings of inferiority and the consciousness of the importance of wage work for bodies, individuals, societies – yes, the whole damned planet. However, “my” aesthetic is very different from the classic Swedish working class literature. And we have different relationships toward modernity. Then: a linear, progressive, “from darkness we move toward the light.” Now: an imperialistic dynamic without outsides, without another horizon.